Finding Myself Again Through Art: Living With Bipolar Disorder, and Postpartum Depression

For a long time, I stopped recognizing myself.

Not physically - though that changed too - but internally. The person I used to be slowly disappeared underneath survival mode, depression, motherhood, emotional exhaustion, and the constant battle of living with bipolar disorder. Somewhere along the way, I stopped creating. And for an artist, losing the ability to create feels like losing a language you once spoke fluently.

Art used to be the only place where my emotions made sense.

Before everything became so heavy, I painted and drew constantly. I sketched emotions I couldn't explain out loud. I poured confusion, anger, fear, and hope into canvases because it was easier than trying to organize the chaos in my head into words. Painting wasn't just a hobby to me - it was proof that I existed out of my pain.

Then slowly, over the course of three years, I lost that part of myself.

People who have never experienced severe depression or postpartum depression often think creativity disappears because someone "lost inspiration." But for me, it was much deeper than that. Depression didn't make just make me uninspired - it made me disconnected from myself completely. I stopped feeling capable of creating anything meaningful. Even looking at a blank canvas felt exhausting.

I would sit there wanting to paint, missing the person I used to be, but feeling emotionally paralyzed. The motivation wasn't there. The energy wasn't there. Sometimes even the desire wasn't there anymore, and that scared me most of all.

One of the most emotional pieces I've ever created came during postpartum depression: a black and white painting of hands covering her face.

That painting felt like grief.

Not grief from losing a person, but grief from losing myself. Everything about it was heavy. The lack of color reflected how empty I felt emotionally at the time. The hands covering the face represented shame, exhaustion, over stimulation, isolation, and the overwhelming feelings of wanting to disappear from the world for just a moment to breathe.

I didn't paint it to be beautiful. I painted it because I needed somewhere to put those feelings.

Looking back now, I realize that painting said everything I couldn't say out loud at the time. Postpartum depression consumed me in ways I didn't know how to explain to other people. There's this pressure placed on mothers to feel grateful, glowing, fulfilled, and emotionally whole after having a child. But postpartum depression can make you feel detached from your own identity. It can make you feel guilty for struggling. It can make you question who you are underneath the responsibility, exhaustion, hormones, and pain.

That black and white painting became a reflection of survival. 

Then there's the other piece - the colorful abstract portrait I painted during mania.

What stands out to me most about that painting is that I almost never use color. My art has always leaned darker, muted, emotional, controlled. But during mania, something shifted. The painting exploded with bright colors, chaotic movement, intensity, emotion, and energy that felt almost uncontrollable. 

At the time, creating it felt euphoric.

My mind was moving faster than my hands could keep up. Ideas poured out of me all at once. I felt deeply connected to the painting while simultaneously feeling disconnected from reality in other ways. Mania can feel seductive like that. It can trick you into believing the intensity is clarity. Sometimes it feels like becoming more alive than everyone around you, until eventually it crosses into emotional instability, impulsivity, exhaustion, and collapse.

When I look at the painting now, I see both beauty and pain inside it.

I see a version of myself trying desperately to express emotions too overwhelming to contain. I see someone searching for identity inside emotional extremes. I see how bipolar can influence creativity in ways that are complicated to talk about honestly.

Because the truth is, mental illness and creativity have a relationship people romanticize far too often.

People love the idea of the "tortured artist." They romanticize mania because they only see productivity, passion, energy, and inspiration. They don't see the emotional crashes afterward. They don't see the instability, the confusion, the impulsive decisions, the sleepless nights, the fear, or the depression waiting on the other side.

There is nothing glamorous about losing control of your own mind.

And there is nothing poetic about being unable to create because you depression has hollowed you out emotionally. 

That's the part people don't talk about enough - the grief artists feel when they lose access to themselves.

For three years, I barely painted or drew anything at all. Every time I thought about creating, I felt intimidated by my own emptiness. I worried I had lost whatever part of me made art possible in the first place. I worried that maybe the artist version of me no longer existed.

But secretly, I've started picking it back up again.

Slowly,

Carefully.

Sometimes fearfully.

There are moments where painting feels healing again instead of painful. Moments where I can feel pieces of myself returning through brush strokes and unfinished sketches. It doesn't feel exactly the same as it used to, but maybe it isn't supposed to.

I think part of healing is accepting that you return to yourself differently after surviving difficult things.

Still, I carry fear with me.

I worry about what happens when depression comes back. I worry about losing motivation again. I worry about abandoning my art the moment my mental health declines. There's always this underlying fear that creativity in my life is fragile - that it can disappear the second my mind turns against me again.

But I'm trying to learn that art doesn't have to disappear completely during hard seasons to still belong to me.

Maybe some days creating will look like full paintings, an other days it will look like rough sketches, journal entries, unfinished ideas, or simply thinking about art without touching a canvas at all. Maybe healing means learning not to punish myself during the quieter seasons.

For so long, I thought productivity determined where I was still an artist.

Now I'm trying to believe that simply returning matters too.

Maybe this version of creativity won't come from mania or emotional destruction. Maybe it can come from honestly instead. From survival. From learning how to exist inside my emotions without letting them completely consume me.

And maybe that's the most authentic art I can create now.

- J. Pruett